According to the Red List of Threatened Species updated by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) on July 21, 2022, the Yangtze river white sturgeon, a rare animal unique to my country, has been officially declared extinct. The Yangtze river white sturgeon is known as the "king of freshwater fish in China" and is one of the very few ancient fish that survived the Cretaceous period 150 million years ago. The Yangtze River white sturgeon is about 3 meters long and weighs 200 to 300 kilograms. It mainly lives in the main and tributaries of the Yangtze River below Yibin. It has a ferocious temperament and grows rapidly. The longest body is 7 meters long.
The extinction of the "king of freshwater fish in China" has sparked national memory and mourning, and people have been reflecting on why the "king of fish" that has lived on the earth for 150 million years will become extinct in modern times. However, when the media and netizens are sending elegy for the Yangtze river white sturgeon, we should also realize that no species is humble, and only by protecting each species can there be biodiversity and a sustainable future.
The IUCN said on its website that the Red List of Threatened Species will be updated again on December 8 this year. Of the 142,577 species of wild animals and plants that have been assessed so far, there are 40,084 endangered species.
In January of this year, biologists in the United States and France published a paper in the journal Biological Review, pointing out that the denial of mass extinctions was based on a "biased view" of the crisis. Because this view focuses on mammals and birds, it ignores the vast majority of invertebrates that make up biodiversity. Biologists estimate and infer by studying land snails and slugs: Since 1500, the earth may have lost 7.5% to 13% of known species (about 2 million species), and 150,000 to 260,000 species have gone extinct .
Now, the Yangtze River white sturgeon in China has become extinct, and the Yangtze River sturgeon has also become extinct in the wild. Sturgeon is "the most threatened group in the world", and its population is declining rapidly. All 26 extant sturgeon species in the world are threatened with extinction, and about two-thirds of the sturgeon population are critically endangered. Globally, major threats to sturgeon include: illegal fishing through the illegal trade in wild caviar and fish meat; dams blocking their migration routes; unsustainable sand mining destroying their spawning grounds and lead to habitat loss.
Humans not only recklessly kill, collect, and harvest natural animal and plant treasures, such as sturgeon, whales, elephants, and redwood forests, but also destructively kill extremely common animals. For example, in Henan, Anhui, Jiangsu, Guangxi and other places, some people use a device called "Dilongyi" to capture earthworms by electric shock. In some places, it takes only 20 minutes to catch 3 kilograms of earthworms. On the land that has not been "electric", 100 to 150 kilograms of earthworms can be harvested a day. Earthworms have edible and medicinal value. Mix the wild earthworms with "ground pot ashes", put them into the "stomach opener" to open their stomachs, rinse them with water, and dry them before eating. The dried earthworm can also be sold in the Chinese herbal medicine market, where it is called Dilong. In the "Chinese Pharmacopoeia", Dilong has the functions of "clearing heat and calming shock, dredging collaterals, relieving asthma, and diuretic".
Modern medical research has found that there are urokinase-like proteases in the intestines and body fluids of earthworms. In 1984, Chinese researchers isolated plasmin, or lumbrokinase, from artificially raised earthworms. Since then, more studies have proved that lumbrokinase has good clinical application value, can effectively dissolve microthrombi, improve microcirculation, and strengthen cardiovascular and cerebrovascular collateral circulation. Therefore, lumbrokinase is widely used in the treatment of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, as well as in the prevention and treatment of endocrine and respiratory diseases.
Due to its wide range of medical value and edible value, the price of Dilong has increased 10 times in the past 20 years. At present, the price of each 500 grams of dry earthworms is 90 to 120 yuan. The huge interest has lured more and more people to catch wild earthworms, and catching earthworms by electric shock has become a means of getting rich quick.
People's demand for earthworms is more extensive than the demand for Yangtze river white sturgeon, because earthworms can be eaten as well as medicines and pharmaceuticals. In order to survive and reproduce, it is normal for humans to have needs, and to some extent, humans can only survive by relying on wild animals and plants. A recent report by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) states that one-fifth of the world's population relies on wildlife for income and food, and one-third relies on firewood for cooking. Wild species are widely used for food and fodder, materials, medicine, energy, recreation and other activities. The IPBES report collected data from more than 6,200 research papers and reports, and calculated that human survival depends on about 33,000 species of plants and fungi, 7,500 species of fish and aquatic invertebrates, and 9,000 species of amphibians , insects, reptiles, birds and mammals.
Other researchers believe that these numbers may be conservative. The widespread use of wild wood for building materials, fuel, and the international trade in plants, algae and fungi alone is a multi-billion dollar industry. In addition, wildlife sightseeing tourism is also a big industry. Before Covid-19, nature reserves around the world received 8 billion tourists annually and generated $600 billion in revenue. What's more, about a third of the roughly 10,000 species that humans regularly utilize have stable populations, suggesting they are being used sustainably. The rest show signs of declining populations due to unsustainable, destructive human use.
Human use of wild species is more common than most people realize, and inappropriate use has led to the gradual decline of natural resources, threatening human lives and livelihoods. In fact, the Chinese have long been reflecting on the relationship between man and nature. The ancients believed that "all things are born to support people, and people have no virtue to repay the sky", and they also put forward theories and practices for treating and using wild species, such as "you can't eat fish and turtles if you don't enter the pond." Researchers in related fields such as modern ecology and environmental protection have further demonstrated the practical significance of this ancient concept.
Ensuring the sustainability of crop and timber production is the most important way to slow the decline of terrestrial wildlife populations, reducing the overall extinction risk of amphibians, birds and mammals by 40 percent, according to a new study. The researchers developed the Species Threat Mitigation and Recovery Index (STAR) and applied it to three animal taxa comprehensively assessed on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species: amphibians, birds and mammals.
It found that eliminating threats to wildlife from crop production would reduce the global extinction risk of these species by 24 percent. A global cessation of unsustainable deforestation would reduce the global risk of extinction by 16%, and control of invasive alien species would reduce the risk of extinction by 10%. STAR can also be used to calculate the benefits of taking habitat restoration actions. By fully restoring the habitats of threatened species, the global extinction risk could be reduced by 56%.
There is an 88,000-hectare commercial rubber project in central Sumatra, Indonesia. Threats to biodiversity in the project area mainly come from crop production, logging and hunting. If the STAR index is applied to this project, actions to reduce the threat of human activities to natural ecology can reduce the extinction risk of species in Sumatra by 0.2% and the extinction risk in Indonesia by 0.04%. Part of the reduced risk comes from protecting the region's tiger, Asian elephant and leaf-nosed bat populations.
For China, biodiversity protection should be carried out in light of the actual local conditions. The extinction of the Yangtze river white sturgeon has sounded the alarm, and the devastating capture of earthworms is also worthy of alarm. In a large and complex ecosystem, each species has its own special value and deserves to be protected, and we must coexist with wild species in a sustainable way.
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